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Why the Cleveland Cavaliers can’t overlook the Detroit Pistons

Courtesy of David Richard, USA Today Sports

The Cleveland Cavaliers and Detroit Pistons will meet Wednesday night for the regular season finale for both teams.

They are also going to take on one another in the first round of the upcoming NBA playoffs. While this makes Wednesday’s affair rather meaningless, there is a whole heck of a lot more to look at here than your normal top seed versus bottom seed postseason series.

Detroit actually took two of the first three regular season meetings, winning in Cleveland back in late February.

That game saw the then recently acquired Tobias Harris finish with a plus-minus of 16 while adding 14 points, five rebounds, three assists and three steals.

Taking on LeBron James for the first time in his Pistons career, Harris and the rest of his teammates held the two-time NBA champion to just 12 points on 5-of-18 shooting. Teaming up with Kentavious Caldwell-Pope and Marcus Morris to play the D, it was readily apparent that the Pistons had the right game plan for King James.

Detroit’s previous meeting with Cleveland ended in an eight-point home defeat. LeBron finished with 20 points, eight rebounds and nine assists while attempting to fend off Caldwell-Pope and Morris. For his part, Harris was still a member of the Orlando Magic.

Despite the single-digit loss, this game wasn’t that close. Cleveland held an 18-point lead heading into the final stanza and didn’t bother playing any of its starters extended minutes at that point.

It was, however, these teams’ first meeting that could be telling. Detroit held the Cavaliers off by five points in a game that saw James put up 30 points on 11-of-21 shooting. This tells us a story of a Pistons squad that can hang with Cleveland even if the former MVP is on his game.

Normally, top-seeded teams have no real issue making it past the first round. In this case, we can’t be too sure.

The mid-season acquisition of Harris is going to loom large in this series. He struggled a great deal in three outings against James and the Cavaliers as a member of the Magic. All Magic losses, Harris averaged just 4.3 points on 35 percent from the field.

Meanwhile, James averaged 23.0 points and 8.0 assists while shooting 60 percent from the field.

One has to wonder why Harris was more successful on both ends of the court in his sole meeting against James as a member of the Pistons.

It’s a rather simple equation. One we don’t have to delve too deep into to draw a conclusion.

Orlando had absolutely no one else on its roster to play defense against James. This led to Harris expending a ton of energy on that end of the court, one of the primary reasons he struggled offensively.

Fast forward to Detroit’s latest win against Cleveland, and it’s apparent this wasn’t the case. With Caldwell-Pope and Morris able to also take turns on James, Harris was able to act as the Pistons’ third scorer. This led to a much better performance on the offensive end of the court.

All-Star center Andre Drummond averaged 20.3 points and 13.7 rebounds while shooting 62 percent from the field in Detroit’s first three outings against Cleveland.

Conversely, Tristan Thompson went for just 5.0 points and less than 10 rebounds. Now that Thompson has been named the Cavaliers’ starting center for this series, it’s going to be interesting to see how he stacks up.

With Reggie Jackson prepared to give Kyrie Irving all he can handle at point guard and Marcus Morris more than capable of hanging with Kevin Love on the perimeter, Detroit matches up extremely well with Cleveland.

It might not be enough to pull off what would be a historical upset, but it could very well make this series much more interesting than most people first imagine.

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